Whether for good or ill, I have lived my life, travel
ling a long road fraught with struggles and quarrels, dis-
puttees and arguments, suffering and anxiety, and reached
these advanced years to find myself at the end of my teeth
er, tired of everything.
In my childhood! used to hear the Kazakhs jeering at
the Uzbek:
You Sarts in wide skirts, you bring your rushes from
afar to thatch your roofs! You bow and scrape when you
meet someone, but you insult him behind his back. You are
afraid of every bush: you rattle on without stopping, and
that’s why they call you Sart-surts.
Where lies the cause of the estrangement amongst the
Kazakh, of their hostility and ill will towards one anoth
er? Why are they insincere in their speech, so lazy, and
possessed by a lust for power?
Observant people long ago noted that foolish laughter
resembles drunkenness. NOW, drunkenness leads to misbe-
haviour a conversation with a soak gives one a headache.
Anyone who constantly indulges in senseless merriment
ignores his conscience, neglects his affairs and commits
unforgivable blunders, for which he can expect to be pun
ished, if not in this world, then in the next.
Sorrow darkens the soul, chills the body, numbs the
will, and then bursts forth in words or tears. I have seen
people praying: Oh, Allah, make me as carefree as a
babe! They imagine themselves to be sufferers, oppressed
by cares and misfortunes, as though they had more sense
than infants.
According to a Kazakh proverb: The source of suc
cess is unity, and of well-being life.
Yet what kind of people are they who live in unity and
how do they achieve such accord? The Kazakhs are quite
ignorant on this score.
Born into this world, an infant inherits two essential
needs. The first is for meat, drink and sleep. These are the
requirements of the flesh, without which the body cannot
be the house of the soul and will not grow in height and
strength.
